Data Point of the Week: $215 Billion in VR/AR Spending by 2021

Worldwide spending on virtual and augmented reality be $11.4 billion this year, growing to to $215 billion in 2021 — a compound annual growth rate of 113.2 percent. This is according to IDC’s latest projections. In fact spending is projected to double in each of the next four years.

These spending figures include consumer and enterprise. Currently, sales are being led by headsets (hardware purchase) and games. That’s followed by manufacturing and retail applications (like this). But enterprise could eclipse AR for lots of the reasons we’ve examined.

The most prevalent use cases will be retail showcasing ($442 million), followed by on-site assembly ($362 million), and manufacturing training ($309 million). But by 2021, industrial maintenance will overtake the top spot ($5.2 billion), followed by public infrastructure ($3.6 billion).

Within enterprise applications, the data further measures where the biggest growth will happen. There we see lab and field work leading the pack in terms growth rate, followed by medical applications like therapy and rehab. The rest of the growth figures are below.

See more info such as geographic segmentation in IDC’s announcement, and stay tuned for lots more data & analysis here.

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Disclosure: ARtillry has no financial stake in the companies mentioned in this article, nor received payment for its production. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.